Cultural & Performance Change

To identify training and the support required for staff to move into employee ownership through the introduction of the “Employee Share Ownership Plan” (ESOP), C-Mac needed to understand the current situation. Consultants were engaged to undertake a survey and make recommendations. The report was titled:

Employee Ownership, Performance Management and High Performance: A Report on the Performance Culture at C-Mac Industries and the firms readiness for Transition to Employee Ownership.

Bill Hovey and Dr Anthony Jensen

The Asia- Pacific Centre for Business Transformation

Macquarie School of Management

Macquarie University, NSW 2113

Below is the Introduction from the report:

Introduction

The purpose of this report is to support the vision of the owners of C-Mac to transition ownership of the firm to its employees over four years. With its move to make shares in the business available to its employees, C-Mac’s owners and its leadership team have shown that they are forward-thinking and prepared to embrace change.

Importantly, whilst C-Mac has received national recognition for its forward-thinking through its being awarded the ESOP of the Year, 2011 the prospects for its vision of ownership transition are at a risk if the firm relies soley on the mechanism of the ESOP.

Equally, there is the potential for C-Mac to be a pathfinder for this type of transition both in Western Sydney and Australia if it gets it right.

This report lays the foundation for ensuring that all the firms objectives for employee ownership are achieved and the owners vision realized. In doing so, this report has three aims:

It will explain how a firm can maximize its potential and become a high performance firm through its people and their relationships

It will measure C-Mac’s culture through an analysis of data gathered from two surveys, each of 21 employees. C-Mac’s responses were then benchmarked against other high performance employee-owned firms.

It will draw conclusions about cultural, performance, and management readiness of C-Mac to successfully transition its ownership to employees.

A high performance firm is one which achieves sustainable economic value over the longer term. High performance firms are marked by:

Transparency

Participative management and

Employee ownership

High performance firms are more resilient than other firms. When measured against other firms, they are shown to perform incrementally better than non-high-performance firms in terms of:

Sales revenue

Employee turnover

Productivity and

High performance firms source ongoing specialist support in the transition to and management of employee ownership.

High performance firms are also more innovative.

Because of the long history of employee ownership overseas, the relative newness of the concept in Australia, and the scarcity of comparable data from Australian firms, our bench mark data are drawn from high-performing employee owned firms which we have measured in Spain and Italy.

In common with C-Mac, these businesses are small medium enterprises. These firms have continued to perform well even in the face of the global financial crisis and the ongoing ………..

If you want to get an understanding of Australian culture and employee ownership in the workplace,

Click here to get a full copy of the ‘Report on the Performance Culture” at C-Mac produced by The Asia- Pacific Centre for Business Transformation.

*[Owner]* An industrial laundry system service company needed repairs and redesign done to their tooling. C-Mac made changes to the tooling to make access and ease of use to decrease service down times.

*[Service Manager]* An industrial fan service company had a failure of a major shopping centre air conditioning fan/ blower. C-Mac repaired the unit within a 24hr turn around for minimum downtime.

*[Owner/Manager]* A major food manufacturer specializing in tomato sauce had a filling machine breakdown. The machine was brought to C-Mac and repaired in 24hrs for minimum downtime of the production line costing $5,000 per hour.

*[RAAF - Warrant Officer]* Airfield support staff required a portable sandbagging frame and requested a design, prototype and trials at no cost. There was nothing suitable on the market i.e. made in Australia. "Sandbagging Frames":materials-handling/1-bagging-equipment#silt-bagging-frame are now on the national procurement data base and some probably overseas at different war zones.

*[Mechanical Design Engineer]* An automotive transmission design customer needed help with designing an automatic transmission gear prototype. We suggested and engineered a more cost effective and practical way for the mass production stage.

*[Nursery Manager]* At an exhibition saw our self tracking nursery trailers and indicated he had a costly issue transporting large (heavy) pots containing advanced trees. Existing method was a bobcat. C-Mac designed and quoted for the manufacture of a Self Tracking “Low Loader”. His comment on the first day of using "Low Loader trailer":nursery-equipment/7-trailers/#low-loader-self-tracking-trailer “Can now move 100 litre pots with trees, 150 metres in 1 hr and not get a sore back”.

*[Purchasing Officer]* A mining design and machining company needed help with machining components urgently as they were too busy to keep up with the demand. C-Mac machined the components so the deadline could be met.

*[General Manager]* Customer had to submit a proposal and compete against other countries for the manufacturing facility. C-Mac submitted drawings to show there was space in existing plant to install the new process and to comply with all Australian OH&S Standards. Working together with customer to submit proposal to the Head Office overseas WON the contract. Project was a success meeting 6month lead time and budget.

*[Nursery Owner]* Needed a specific Potting & Mixing machine. for his yuccas nursery, but the problem was it was no longer manufactured. From his description and specifications our engineers designed and modelled in 3D software his requirements. "Potting Machine":nursery-equipment/3-potting-machines/ was manufactured and fully tested with potting media in our workshop, video was then sent to customer who was very pleased with the results. Machine disassembled and freighted interstate and installed.

*[Maintenance Engineer]* An industrial hydraulic fitting manufacturer had problems with gear and shaft breakages with their machinery. They also had problems repairing and maintaining. C-Mac offered to repair and maintain their machinery on-site instead of having to permanently employ fitters.